please just forget the name Valerie Plame. That was just a trumped up story to begin with. She decided to “stand by her man.”

One misguided small player, Scooter Libby, was caught for no more than trying to avoid public display and was punished ruthlessly for an embarassing mispeak.

How many times has Joe Wilson “mispoke” or so to speak.

And please allow Reporters to keep their confidential sources, confidential, or there will be no sources except for the offical lines.

Lucky save.

FLAIL AWAY!

Yes, it’s a small thing. But nevertheless, I think the White House did not really win on this. Perino looked like a fool, whining that she’d been wronged (wronged, I tell you!). And in the end my suspicion is that they turfed this to the ombudsman, who can then write a long article after careful digging… which only prolongs the agony of the White House here.

I think some kind of tipping point has been reached or passed… and these folks are flailing badly.

see it?

[not that it matters, really.]

actually if i told you,
then i’d have to kill you.

seriously, though, i saw the image
for the 20th by simply substituting
20 for 19 in the url, thus:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/…/12/19/…/scan.jpg
[this is a dead-link, don’t
bother to click it — it is
simply an example.]

a childish trick, i know, but
then many webmasters — and their
approach to coding time-sensitive
pages — is likewise childish. . .
they often pre-load the images
to the server, then connect them
to the page, later. . .

perhaps i have already disclosed
far too much, about far too little.

p e a c e

CIA Director Michael V. Hayden told lawmakers privately last week that three White House lawyers were briefed in 2004 about the existence of videotapes showing the interrogation of two al-Qaeda figures, and they urged the agency to be “cautious” about destroying the tapes, according to sources familiar with his classified testimony.

The three White House officials present at the briefing were David S. Addington, then Vice President Cheney’s chief counsel; Alberto R. Gonzales, then White House counsel; and John B. Bellinger III, then the top lawyer at the National Security Council, according to Hayden’s closed-door testimony before the Senate intelligence committee.

When told that some high-ranking CIA officials were demanding that the tapes be destroyed, the White House lawyers “consistently counseled caution,” said one U.S. official familiar with Hayden’s testimony. Another source said that Harriet E. Miers followed up with a similar recommendation in 2005, making her the fourth White House lawyer “urging caution” on the action.

The ambiguity in the phrasing of Hayden’s account left unresolved key questions about the White House’s role. While his account suggests an ambivalent White House view toward the tapes, other intelligence officials recalled White House officials being more emphatic at the first meeting that the videos should not be destroyed.

Also unexplained is why the issue was discussed at the White House without apparent resolution for more than a year.

Of course, at this point we don’t know whether the briefing in 2004 was the first briefing on the matter. It’s hard to believe that CIA came up with the proposal in 2003 and then backed off because of congressional objection without consulting with the White House. So the point is that the 2004 briefing may again only be one piece of the puzzle.

Correction: December 20, 2007

The subheading with a front-page headline on Wednesday for an article about discussions between four top White House lawyers and the Central Intelligence Agency over whether to destroy videotapes showing secret interrogations of members of Al Qaeda referred imprecisely to the White House’s position thus far on the matter. While Bush administration officials have acknowledged some discussions leading up to the destruction of the tapes in November 2005, as the article noted, the White House itself has not officially said anything on the subject, so its role was not “wider than it said.” (A related article appears today on Page A6.)

It appears that they conceded an error because “it” when referring to “the White House” must have to do with the White House’s official position and statements. So even if White House officials had been peddling the story about Miers on background, that doesn’t count as “it”. This would appear to mean that the White House can shape a story anyway it likes without being institutionally responsible for that position. Good to know.

But it raises the question, how do you know that the story for tomorrow is page-one, center column?